100 Things

I was recently talking to a widow friend about our journeys navigating the world as half of a couple. It wasn’t until I was alone that I found out how much power there is in being two. You have no idea of this when your partner is alive and well, but when that is no longer the case it is a startling revelation. Walking into a restaurant by myself or any kind of gathering, even after all this time, feels like a jarring exposure of every vulnerable part of me.

We also talked about being around people who constantly complain about their partner. That it is a different kind of jarring, the kind that can tip into rage at any moment. Thinking you know what life would be like without your partner and living in the reality of it are vastly different. “If only they knew what we know,” I said to my friend. “I could easily list a hundred things I miss about Mark without even trying that hard.”

• The smell of his neck.
• How tender he was with animals.
• The energy of him in the house.
• How the kids had to label their leftovers so he wouldn’t eat them.
• The sound of his bike coasting around the corner.
• His ginormous readers that looked so nerdy.
• Hearing at the end of the day about an experiment that his students knocked out of the park.
• His daily yelling at right wingers on cable news and Chuck Todd every Sunday morning.
• How every night he wore earplugs and a black sock over his eyes so he’d get a good night’s sleep.
• His whistling.
• When I was talking to him and he pushed the curls away from my eyes.
• Folding his clothes.
• How we worked side-by-side every Sunday to cook dinner for the kids.
• That he could sit on the screened porch and do nothing but watch the birds.
• The sound of his work bag when it thudded on the bench.
• His pride in the kids that would make his eyes tear up when he talked about them.
• That he was on so many committees at the med center because he believed it was his obligation, and also because he liked having the inside scoop on what was happening in that place.
• When he’d go to the store and would ask beforehand, “Good Visa (the debit card) or bad Visa (the one that always had a balance)? Then he’d use the wrong one.
• Seeing the debits in our account from him having a four-shot espresso with his students at their morning lab meeting.
• How he loved my style and would want to see what I was wearing before I went to work.
• That he could hear a couple of notes of music and know exactly what movie it was from.
• When he squeezed my hand every night before he fell asleep.
• That a prediction of any kind of storm caused him to say, “We’ve got to batten down the hatches,” as if we were on a dinghy in the middle of a nor’easter in the Atlantic.
• When I was telling him a story and got tripped up on some part of it and he’d say, “It was always, no it was never……..”
• That he appreciated homemade soup on a cold night.
• Going to the garden center together and him loading up on vegetables and me on flowers.
• Whenever he was near any kind of water he would crouch down and flip things over looking for snakes.
• The way he delighted in Mabel and being her Boompa.
• How he’d sit in the basement fixing a tire on his bike like he was doing surgery.
• That he loathed anyone in his field who he thought was phoning it in.
• When he came home with news that he’d gotten a grant and we’d go out for a steak dinner.
• How he called old professors who wouldn’t retire to make room for hungry, young ones “fossils.”
• The times Will would stop by with bagels after an early Saturday morning with his running group and he’d act nonchalant and then wolf down three.
• Watching him barbecue while reading a scientific paper over the grill.
• How my constant decorating and rearranging made him nuts but he’d always brag about it to anyone who came in the house.
• Him carrying the laundry basket up and down the stairs.
• That he’d clean the kitchen and make the next day’s coffee every night.
• How he’d putter with his fish tanks in the basement and after he died we found out there were thousands of guppies in them.
• When we’d argue about money and he’d say, “Tell me what it is we need that we don’t have.”
• How he loved talking to Mallory about dance and would research different styles for their next phone call.
• His intensity countered by his ability to be outrageously silly.
• How he hated hanging Christmas lights outside but did it because I loved it.
• The exchanges of love throughout the day, both big and small.
• When he’d hear me waking up and have my coffee ready when I came downstairs.
• How he’d say he was trying to lose weight and didn’t want ice cream but would help himself to a heaping bowl the minute I went upstairs to go to bed.
• How he always predicted another pandemic and would have been all over the research on Covid.
• How he’d say, “We need to get that fixed,” and pretend he was going to do that when we both knew it would be me that would follow through.
• Walking every night after dinner.
• That if he were flipping through the channels and came across Shawshank Redemption he’d watch it every single time.
• His disdain for wealthy people who didn’t use their money to make life better for others.
• How he could string curse words together like it was an Olympic event.
• His roofing stories and the pride he had in starting out as a blue collar guy.
• That he was adamant that every person who did any work in our house be tipped.
• The empty spot on the sectional we bought before he died that he never got to sit on.
• The many conversations we had about the kids and how he didn’t want them to make the same mistakes he did when he was young, and me saying, “And what part of that would you give up? What part didn’t lead you to where you are now?”
• Going Christmas shopping for me with Maggie and how I could tell when he walked in the door that he had so much fun with her.
• How he always kept the birds fed.
• That whenever I’d say, “Since you’re not doing anything…,” he’d yell, “I’M THINKING!!!” from the movie A Serious Man.
• That the cats ran to the door when he got home because they knew he’d give them more cat food even if they’d already been fed.
• How much he looked forward to he and Nate going off to see a guy movie together.
• The way he cherished the friendships he had with his biking buddies.
• When we had to do our taxes and he knew the details of every work trip he made that year and whether we could claim it or not.
• How he often repeated the story of the neighborhood kid who knocked on the door and asked to speak to Mr. Kathy.
• That his favorite winter activity on a Saturday night was sitting at the dining room table watching music videos on Youtube.
• Making something new for dinner and him raving about it.
• Knowing every single day that I was loved.
• How he worried about me every time I got a kidney stone.
• When I’d call him at work for something and he’d say, “Hey, darlin.'”
• The gentle way he always spoke to his sister.
• When he’d come home from work and say, “I was talking to Joe and he said…..”
• Our road trips.
• That he thought I never spent any money on myself because he never saw the bags.
• How when we’d get in an argument I’d say, “I’ll tell you one thing, Mark Fisher, my next husband is going to respect me,” and he’d imitate me and we’d both burst out laughing.
• His obsession with ridding the yard of squirrels.
• How he rated peaches and loved opening the fridge and seeing a bowl of cherries.
• When we were going to get something to eat and he’d say “no” to everything I suggested but could never come up with an alternative so we always ate at the local pizza place.
• How much he would have loved the bedroom flip I did because of how dark and quiet that room is.
• When the cats would scratch at the bedroom door at night to get in and he’d throw a pillow at the door and go right back to sleep.
• How he’d advise his mom on on her meds and tell her she needed to take care of herself.
• That he hated shopping but loved Costco.
• How he tried to learn as much as he could about each of his graduate students and stayed in contact with them after they graduated.
• That he was proud of his degrees and just as proud of the plaque he got for being Rookie of the Year for hockey in his freshman year at Purdue.
• Sitting around and deciding what we would do if we ever won the lottery.
• How he would research any subject that caught his attention.
• How he always wanted to take a sabbatical to work in Europe so we could have an overseas adventure for a year.
• That somehow his bike was an extension of him in ways I couldn’t explain.
• How he wore his shoes until there were holes on the bottom.
• That he never minded mowing the lawn or shoveling the driveway but hated taking the trash to the curb.
• Being at his work events and seeing how much his colleagues and students liked him.
• How much he loved my mom.
• That he only learned to appreciate the strategy in baseball when I explained it to him when he was high.
• How when we were in Portugal he noticed all the men wore scarves knotted around their necks so we went out and found him one and he wore it all the time.
• Taking care of him.
• Hearing the garage door roll up when he worked late and knowing he made it safely home.
• Checking National Parks off our list.
• Saying “This is my husband, Mark.”
• His work ethic.
• How he paid close attention to politics around the world.
• Our dream of having a cottage on a lake.
• His eyes, dear god, his eyes.

I will always feel fortunate that Mark and I gave each other a wide berth to have interests and friendships outside of our marriage. It made life more interesting for both of us, but at the end of the day it was him and me navigating life and marriage and jobs and kids and the world. If you think your life would be better without your partner next to you, then I think by all means you should make changes to make that happen. But for those of us on the other side, those of us who didn’t have a choice, please measure your words carefully. You have no idea the vacuum that absence creates, the huge and the small things that slam into you, even years later, from nowhere.

One hundred things is but a tip in the iceberg of loss.